Obama staff will say cu l8r 2 IM

Barack Obama may get to keep his BlackBerry, but David Axelrod is losing his IM.

The lawyers broke the bad news to Obama aides at a briefing Friday morning convened by incoming Deputy White House Counsel Cassandra Butts: Not only are they leaving the modern world to enter a White House where some of the clunky desktop computers still run Windows 2000 but — worst of all — they'll be forced to surrender a form of communication staffers have relied on for the last two years to communicate with each other, outside allies, and the press.

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From Axelrod, the chief campaign strategist, down to junior staffers in the press office, Obama's campaign relied heavily on software many of them began using in high school — AOL Instant Messager and Google Chat. Instant messaging, though little mentioned, is — perhaps as much as e-mail—deeply woven into contemporary politics and media, whose fabric is the constant, quick, gossipy transmission of spin and information. But a calculus that's perhaps one part security, one part law, and two parts politics, has long barred instant messaging from the White House.

"They just told us flat out we couldn't IM in the White House," groused one senior staffer Friday.

"It sucks. It's really going to slow us down," complained another, saying that lawyers had warned that, along with instant messaging, White House software will restrict users to a range of sites roughly "like your average grade school."

The clunky technology is standard issue for government offices, but the bar on instant messaging is particular to the White House. Legal and security experts say it is dictated by the fear of embarrassment if IMs were to be disclosed. The Presidential Records Act requires White House documents to become public five years after a president leaves office, and most lawyers think it would apply to any instant messages discussing government business.

"People have to be conscious that when you put something on paper you think it through," said former Clinton White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum. With IM, he said, "you think you're talking but you're really writing."

The Bush Administration has been rebuked by federal courts for the apparent destruction of e-mails sent by political aides on non-governmental accounts, and Obama's aides are intensely aware that any instant messages written must be preserved, and will become part of the permanent record, which may not be desirable.

"They're going to realize, once you go inside the bubble, it becomes much more difficult to maintain contact with the outside world," said Reginald Brown, a former associate White House counsel for President Bush. "IMing encourages a kind of casualness in conversation that will be the bane of the lawyers down the line. The reality is that if you want to engage in the equivalent of IMing, you have to pick up the phone."

Brown noted that, along with entering the permanent record after the presidency, the IMs could become public sooner in response to Congressional subpoenas or lawsuits.

"These lawyers — [incoming White House Counsel] Greg Craig in particular — come out of a law firm environment and knows how onerous e-discovery has been for clients," he said.